Sunday, January 25, 2015

Sunday Sermon [La Ofrenda/ The Offering]

Hola Everybody...
When I first wrote this, I had some responses along the lines of, “it was just
some deranged lady... ” And I guess perception is an important consideration.
However, being present (which is what this post is really about)
is everything. As a teacher used to tell me, life is like the Lotto, you
gotta be in it to win it.

* * *

La Ofrenda/ The Offering

What you think you are is a belief to be
undone.

One day, a few years ago, I played
hookie from work. It was one of those early spring days and though it started
with rain, a jealous sun struggled with obstinate clouds. It was lunchtime in
one of my favorite reading spots in The City in Union Square Park. There’s a
life-sized statue of Gandhi there and people often put fresh cut flowers in its
hands.

I have done this many times. I have
several “power spots” throughout the city where I go read, observe, and
contemplate, alone yet surrounded -- stillness surrounded by frantic activity.
On that day, no sooner than I had settled on a bench, a woman with long white, wiry
wild hair came shuffling toward me. I was hoping she wouldn’t sit next to me; I
didn’t want to smell yet another homeless person (such is the way we make
people invisible). Perhaps reading me, she sat down rigidly across from
me. I wanted to get back to my reading. But she stared at me intensely. Then
slowly, reflectively, as if following some unknown anointment ritual, she
emptied a bag of birdseed on her shoulders. It was a strange sight even for La
Gran Manzana -- the capital of wierdness. I noticed how the seeds clung to
her hair and clothes, pooled onto her lap, into the folds of her worn clothes,
and scattered over her soiled sneakers. Then she leaned back and, after fixing
me once more with that intense gaze, she stretched her arms and closed her
eyes.

A brief moment passed and first one
pigeon flew to her and then several more, and then a dozen or more. They
congregated on her arms, pecking at the seeds and one another in a feeding
frenzy. Soon the edges of her body were blurred in a flutter of wings. I sat
there transfixed thinking this was an act of madness -- clearly this woman was
crazy; it seemed as if the birds were devouring her. At the same time, the act
took on an air of magic. All the while she was disappearing into this chaotic
mass of feathers, she was whispering an incantation in a language I couldn’t
make out. I sat there hypnotized, my open book now forgotten.

I noticed that others were staring
also. People glanced up from their paper bag lunches or reading their
newspapers and gasped. Young mothers pushing strollers stopped and gawked. It
was a gesture of such tremendous force that it took us out of our little
protective shells, from the cocoons of fearful lives, and for a brief moment we
forgot ourselves. Her audience -- witnesses to what I call her offering -- came
together for that ephemeral time and we were connected somehow. It was as if
her act served to break down the walls between us.

In a few minutes, the birds had their
fill and one by one, flew away, and the woman calmly grabbed her bag and
shuffled away.

Such was the power of her act that for
hours afterward I felt as if in a dream and the streets of The City seemed to
me new again.

And such is life in The City -- if we
stay here long enough, we become immune and lose our sense of awe and forget
even that we possessed it. Then something happens to shatter the routine: a
blizzard, or a blackout, even a terrorist act and for a few miraculous hours,
we come together as our lives are upended and we notice each other’s presence
and come into the awareness of the possibilities of human connection. Strangers
reach out to one another; aid is offered without condition, hearts are opened.
In a sense, I see this awareness, this presence, is a form of meditation in
action.

I guess part of the reason I live here
because the challenge of The City is to figure if this experience of openness
can be cultivated and made to last.

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My life experiences have led me to strive to help others move their lives in a positive direction, exploring opportunities that would otherwise be closed to them. I like to think I sit at the crossroads of the dialectic between knowledge and action. I hope that what transpires here is reflective of my beliefs.